More (and better) Hunger Games

The series continues with a strong second helping.

At the conclusion of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I felt as if I'd been watching an old-fashioned serial -- only one that had been playing for two hours and 26 minutes. Even at this excessive length, the second big-screen adaptation of novelist Suzanne Collins's popular series, left me wanting more.

Much of the credit for this goes to Jennifer Lawrence , the fine actress who gives Catching Fire its conscience and its heart.

Moreover, the movie's visual environment -- skillfully created by director Francis Lawrence and a capable effects team -- enhances what amounts to an upgraded second helping of a franchise that's gaining both momentum and seriousness as it moves toward its finale.

Lawrence (the director) has a distinct advantage over his predecessor, director Gary Ross. Because he doesn't need to establish the world in which the action takes place, Lawrence is free to advance the story, and he wastes no time belaboring the obvious: The Hunger Games that define the movie have a disturbing contemporary relevance, reality TV carried to perverse extremes.

This edition finds Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen as haunted as she is determined: In the last installment Katniss killed to survive: She now suffers the burdens of post traumatic stress disorder and lingering guilt.

The twist in the story finds Katniss and Josh Hutcherson's Peeta thrown back into competition as part of a ploy by the evil Capitol to extinguish any flames of rebellion that might be sparking in the various districts into which the country of Panem has been divided.

This particular competition -- staged to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Capitol's victory over an earlier rebellion -- pits previous Hunger Games winners against one another in what promises to be an even more brutal fight to the death. There's only one winner in a Hunger Games competition; i.e., one survivor.

There's a hitch in the plan, though. This time, combatants are much more likely to ally with one another because they all feel betrayed. Victories in earlier editions of the Hunger Games were supposed to guarantee the winners and their families lives of peaceful ease. The Capitol has reneged on its promise.

It doesn't take much familiarity with the Collins's novel to know that currents of rebellion flicker beneath the fascistic, authoritarian order that the Capitol ruthlessly enforces. Public floggings and arbitrary punishments makes us root for revolution.

The returning cast includes Donald Sutherland as President Snow, a man whose cunning is as thorough as his crisp enunciation. Liam Hemsworth returns as Gale, Katniss's old flame. Katniss's heart may belong to Gale, but she's forced into a phony romance with Peeta -- mostly to amuse the ever-observant powers-that-be in the Capitol. Will the sham become real?

Woody Harrelson reprises his role as Haymitch, an older former Hunger Games winner. Elizabeth Banks returns as Effie Trinket, the big-haired fashionista who presides over the public image of Katniss and Peeta. Lenny Kravitz is back as Cinna, Katniss's super-creative costumer; and Stanley Tucci again turns up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Games broadcast whose smile is as big as a billboard. A little of Tucci's over-the-top, parodic take on game show hosts goes a long way, even when used judiciously, as it is here.

The movie benefits from the addition of a few new characters: Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a game designer and master schemer, becomes the brains behind President Snow's malignant schemes. Plutarch has been charged with designing this edition's electronically controlled Hunger Game: It's called The Quarter Quell and includes poisonous fog, vicious baboons, swooping birds and a storm surge.

Also joining the fray are Jeffrey Wright, as a technically savvy warrior, and Sam Claffin, as an arrogant combatant, who turns out to be less selfish than we initially anticipate. Jena Malone has a nice turn as a Hunger Games participant who makes no attempt to hide her fury at having been drawn back into combat.

From the outset, the movie's effects team has ample opportunity to impress -- in the sleek imperial Capitol, on speeding trains and in decaying District 12, home to Katniss and Peeta, and, of course, in the action-packed games. (Oddly, the games might be the movie's least interesting achievement.)

The movie builds to a climax that neatly sets the stage for the final chapter, Mockingjay, which is scheduled to be released in two installments next year.

Unlike some franchises, Catching Fire isn't afraid to put some breathing space between its action set pieces. And this time, the movie seems more serious about immersing us in a class-divided society in which the misfortunes of the impoverished many support the decadence of the privileged few.

A cracked journey across Nebraska

Bruce Dern's somber performance anchors director Alexander Payne's latest foray into the Midwest.

Director Alexander Payne's Nebraska practically begs to be admired by cinema buffs and critics. To begin with, the movie -- set in bleak towns of the Midwest -- was shot in black and white, a retro move that can be seen as a defiantly bold stroke.

Just as significant, Nebraska boasts a fine and flinty performance from a 77-year-old actor, Bruce Dern. The plus: It's always nice to see a sagging career reinvigorated.

To further add to its cinematic bona fides, Nebraska exudes a sense of wistful melancholy, emerging as a slightly cracked ode to a vanishing America. The story takes place in towns made sparse by the absence of everything from tempting upscale malls to well-stocked big-box stores. The landscapes and towns in Nebraska seem to have slumped into a state of spiritual and material exhaustion.

It's hardly surprising that the characters who inhabit these landscapes can feel similarly depleted.

I guess I'm saying that there's plenty to admire about Payne's latest road movie, but I'm not totally on board with the effort.

Look, Nebraska has significant rewards (Dern's performance, surprising jolts of humor and a quietly moving father/son finale), but the movie also can feel burdened by a sideshow quality that makes some of its characters seem as if they've been imprisoned in a grotesque Midwestern diorama.

The story centers on Woody Grant (Dern), an aging alcoholic who receives a magazine promotion in the mail, and believes he has won $1 million. No longer in a possession of a driver's license, Woody sets out to claim his prize by walking from Billings, Mont., to Lincoln, Neb. Clearly, Woody's running short on mental acuity. He's quiet, withdrawn, perhaps a bit demented, a man whose good old days probably never were all that good.

And that's part of what makes Dern's performance so convincing. He captures the hollow vacancy of a man whose memory has begun to fail. It's as if half of him already has left the planet.

After unsuccessful attempts to talk his father out of a perilous journey, Woody's son Dave (Will Forte of Saturday Night Live fame) decides to drive his dad to Lincoln. Dave knows the "sweepstakes" prize is a bogus come-on designed to sell magazine subscriptions, but he indulges the old man's fantasy.

Maybe Dave hopes that an extended road trip will provide an opportunity to bond with his emotionally remote, sometimes cruel father. Besides, Dave's at loose ends, having just lost his fiancee.

Thankfully, Woody and Dave don't spend the entire movie in a car. They make an extended stop in Hawthorne, Neb., the bleak town where Woody grew up.

Woody's family -- the folks who remained in Hawthorne -- acquires traces of freak-show distortion, particularly his two nephews, bestubbled dolts whose entire conversational repertoire consists of mocking the length of time it has taken Dave to drive from Billings to Hawthorne.

Once word gets out that Woody has won $1 million, the covetous Hawthorne townsfolk cozy up to him. Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach), a former business associate, insists that Woody owes him a substantial sum. Just about everyone wants to feed at the trough of Woody's supposed good fortune.

Many of the scenes in Hawthorne are played for laughs as Dave becomes increasingly protective of his father's sad fantasy, a tacit recognition that his father's hope -- though built on a false foundation -- might be all the old man has left.

The movie receives a considerable boost when Woody's wife (June Squibb) shows up in Hawthrone to spew some venom and speak unforgiving truths about the town's residents, both living and dead. Squibb's Kate Grant adds one of the movie's livelier touches, although some of her dialogue can be seen as the kind of cheap trick you'd find in lesser movies: the supposed shock of hearing an older person use profanity, for example.

Forte holds his own, as does an underutilized Bob Odenkirk (familiar from TV's Breaking Bad). Odenkirk plays Dave's brother. As an anchor on a local TV news show in Billings, Okenkirk's Ross seems to have trumped his brother's meager professional accomplishments. Dave works in a stereo store.

For me, Nebraska felt like a backward step from Payne's work in movies such as The Descendants, Sideways and Election. Falling more into an About Schmidt mode, Payne -- working from a script by Bob Nelson -- tries to alleviate some of his comedy's bitter sting with an ending steeped in sentiment.

At times, Nebraska feels as flat and uninflected as the landscape over which it travels, but fortunately for Payne, the movie's small-triumph ending pretty much works. That puts Nebraska in a weirdly incongruous class of its own: It's a dreary crowd-pleaser of a movie.

'The Book Thief' gets it all wrong

It's not often that a movie gets just about everything wrong, but that's the case -- at least in my view -- with The Book Thief, an adaptation of a popular 2006 young-adult novel by Australian author Markus Zusak.

Director Brian Percival, known for directing six episodes of Downton Abbey, turns a World War II Holocaust story into a kind of fairy tale that also wants to celebrate the power of the written word.

This resultant tone -- radically misguided, I think -- turns The Book Thief into a preposterously sanitized portrait of hardship and war, all built around an achingly pretentious gimmick: The story is narrated by Death (the off-screen voice of actor Roger Allam).

Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nelisse) provides the story with its center. Liesel's mother, a leftist threatened by the rise of Nazism, allows her daughter to be adopted by a German couple: Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). Rush's character is a kindly older man who soon begins teaching Liesel how to read; Watson's Rosa is a gruff woman whose good heart gradually is exposed.

Liesel's best friend is Rudy (Nico Liersch), a boy who looks as if he could serve as a poster child for Aryan supremacy, but who is good-natured, loyal and infectiously likable.

A pivotal plot twist kicks in when Hans and Rosa decide to hide a young Jewish man named Max (Ben Schnetzer) from the Nazis. Hans feels he must give Max shelter because the boy's father saved Hans's life during World War I.

As Liesel becomes an increasingly voracious reader, the movie seems to be proclaiming the saving power of words, the transcendental elevation that literature often promises. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) no words saved the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust and who received little support from their neighbors. Of course, that's not the stuff of fairy tales.)

Steeped in faux German accents and making haphazard use of subtitles, The Book Thief has an accomplished enough look, but still stands as a big-screen misstep. To buy into this movie, you have to believe that it's possible for people to be in a building that suffers a direct hit by Allied bombs, and, moments later, be displayed in the streets, their dead bodies totally unmutilated.

I can't say that The Book Thief represents a case of good intentions that simply didn't pan out; for the life of me, I couldn't figure out exactly what the movie's intentions were.

Perhaps The Book Thief worked as a novel; as a movie, it tends to be as guileless as a grade-school primer -- and no more revealing.

The Book Thief occasionally has its English-speaking cast spouting a few German words. I'll add to the multi-lingual babble by saying, "Nein." "Nein." And, "nein" again.

Lives the screen usually neglects

Credit director Laurie Collyer (Sherrybaby) for trying to illuminate a corner of American life that usually evades the shining light of cinema. In her new movie Sunlight Jr., Collyer focuses on a couple (Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon) trying to eke out a living in Central Florida. Watts's Melissa works at Sunlight Jr., a convenience store that gives the movie its title, and Dillon's Richie -- in a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident -- collects disability checks. In this world, nothing is easy. Melissa's lecherous boss (Antoni Corone) makes her life needlessly difficult. She's also being stalked by a drug-dealing ex-boyfriend (Norman Reedus), who happens to own the home that Melissa's mom (Tess Harper) rents. Melissa and Richie's minimal-hope existence shows signs of promise when Melissa becomes pregnant. The couple begins to see a future. Still, we know it's unlikely that Melissa and Richie -- well played and nicely shaded by both Watts and Dillon -- will be able to break the low-wage and dependency cycle in which they're mired. Sunlight Jr. is not a perfect movie, and it can feel as if Hollywood stars are slumming when they take on this kind of project, but Collyer's drama never dehumanizes Melissa or Richie, allowing them to emerge as feeling human beings whose need for each other might have a chance of surviving perpetual hard times.

Indigestible chaos in Romania

In Charlie Countryman, first-time Swedish director Fredrik Bond tosses off some interesting images, even when he's trying to keep things looking seedy. Fair to say that Bond and his director of cinematography, Roman Vasyanov, prove they have eyes for unusual shots. Storytelling? That's another matter. Chaotic to the point of confusion, the movie casts Shia LaBeouf as a young man adrift after his mother's death: Bond can't find a groove that makes sense of the journey LaBeouf's character takes: from Chicago to Bucharest. Why Bucharest? Charlie's recently departed mom (Melissa Leo) appears to her son in a vision and instructs him to head for Romania. On his flight to Bucharest, Charlie meets Victor (Ion Carmitru), a warm-hearted Cubs fan who dies before the plane lands. Once in Bucharest, Charlie looks up the daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) Victor told him about before his unfortunate demise. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Charlie falls in love or that his romantic pursuit is not problem free. Charlie's interest in Wood's Gabi upsets Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen), a handsome but vicious thug who was once Gabi's lover. As he wanders around Bucharest, Charlie also meets Darko (Til Schweiger), a gangster who -- like Nigel -- is looking for a videocassette that seems to have some importance in advancing what little story can be found. Adopting a Ratso Rizzo-like shuffle and a haggard look, LaBeouf becomes the naive tourist in a city inhabited by bizarre, sometimes dangerous characters. He also meets a couple of companions at a youth hostel (James Buckley and Rupert Grint). Working with a less-than-convincing accent, Wood doesn't seem quite tantalizing enough to justify Charlie's willingness to die for love, and Charlie Countryman (originally titled The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman) emerges as little more than a pop pastiche that travels an awfully long way to go nowhere.

Food, yes, but character, as well

One restaurant specializes in dishes such as squab inspired by the artist Miro. Another offers down-home country fare. And a third features Mexican cuisine derived from dishes the chef's mother makes. These restaurants are located, respectively, in Chicago, Iowa and Arizona. For a time, it seems as if director Joseph Levy's documentary, Spinning Plates, is going to be a study in contrasting cooking styles -- from arty to the point of refinement to basic, stick-to-the-ribs fare.

But as Levy's movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the human stories behind these restaurants constitute the real main course: I won't spell out every twist and turn, but I will tell you that difficulties experienced by the movie's main characters range from stage four cancer to destructive fires to devastating economic woes.

The movie focuses on three characters: Grant Achatz operates Chicago's acclaimed Alinea; Mike Breitbach is the sixth Breitbach to operate Breitbach's Country Dining in Balltown, Iowa, and Gabby Martinez is the chef at La Cocina de Gabby, an Arizona restaurant she runs with her husband, Francisco.

Levy's movie emerges as a display of American diversity across a variety of economic and social situations.

Although the movie's shifts between the three stories can seem a bit arbitrary, you can tell what Levy -- a former Food Network producer -- seems to have in mind. I think he wanted to show that cooking involves passion and commitment, and so does living through adversity.

Spinning Plates would have benefited from a bit of commentary that at least wondered why high-priced Alinea thrives while a Mexican restaurant like La Cocina struggles. Spinning Plates misses the kind of interpretive perspective that could have tied the movie's three stories -- each quite compelling -- together.*

*With all due respect to Achatz, whose culinary methods blend science and art and who has confronted more than a normal share of personal difficulties, I couldn't help wonder what a meal at Alinea might cost. On the day I checked the restaurant's Web site, a fixed-price meal was set at $210. Devotees of the restaurant -- according to enthusiastic reviews found on Yelp -- note that a meal might run between $300 to $600 per person after drinks, tax and tips. The restaurant sells tickets, usually two-to-three months in advance.(The movie points out that preparation for a single course might require as many as five people to spend 12 hours in the kitchen, which I suppose is part of the reason that the restaurant is so pricey.)

Hey, I like fine dining as much as the next person, but isn't it possible to view Alinea as an alarming expression of culinary elitism? OK, so maybe a meal can be a bona fide art experience, an occasion replete with creative displays of food and abundant visual wit, but when you remember that the average recipient of food stamps receives about $134 per month* -- less than $1.50 per meal -- it's difficult not to bypass sticker shock and go directly to depression. I presume that not everyone who eats at Alinea is super-rich: Dedicated foodies may save as long as necessary to support an evening's splurge. More power to them.

But don't let any of my reservations about dropping $600 for a meal -- not matter how amazing -- stop you from seeing Spinning Plates: The people behind the food make the movie worthwhile, no matter what other conclusions you draw.


*According to the Feeding America web site.

A club no one would want to join

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto give Dallas Buyers Club its heart and soul.

Dallas Buyers Club -- the real-life story of a dissolute Texas homophobe who in 1985 was diagnosed with AIDS -- has been written about almost exclusively in terms of its two stars: Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto.

McConaughey plays rodeo cowboy and electrician Ron Woodroof, and Leto plays Rayon, a transvestite who becomes an unlikely friend to Woodroof, as well as a business associate of sorts.

The fact that most of the writing about the movie has focused on McConaughey and Leto -- and the truly amazing performances each gives -- is understandable.

It's impossible to write about Dallas Buyers Club without mentioning that the movie caps a transition in McConaughey's career -- from promising pretty boy to a full-fledged character actor who can be eccentric, fearless and unnervingly immersive. McConaughey's engine always seems to be running at high speeds, even when he's idling.

To play Woodroof, McConaughey reduced himself to skeletal weight, unflinchingly embraced the ugly side of Woodroof's character and wound up offering a piece of performance-art caliber acting that poses a seldom-debated question: How much can experience really change a person?

Can a good-ole Texas boy, with a proclivity for drugs and hookers, develop unexpected sensitivities? How far in that direction could he possibly go? How would it look if he did begin to see the world through different eyes?

To McConaughey's and the film's credit, Dallas Buyers Club never totally files away Woodroof's rough edges: His bigotry, his boundless capacity for hustling and his unapologetic self-absorption remain constant throughout.

If you're familiar with Leto -- i.e., if you know what he looks like -- you'll find him unrecognizable as Rayon, a transvestite who forms an initially uneasy alliance with Woodroof.

Woodroof and Rayon meet in a hospital, after both have been diagnosed with AIDS. Rayon approaches the wary Woodroof, and as the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Leto has put himself as far out on an emotional limb as McConaughey. He's playing a good-hearted character whose AIDS leads him down a path of heightened self-destruction.

Woodroof develops a personal connection to Rayon, but he also sees an opportunity to cash in on other people's troubles.

After he visits a rogue doctor (Griffin Dunne) in Mexico, Woodroof finds a way around U.S. law. He sets up a club that allows him to import and provide vitamin concoctions that Dunne's character dispenses. Club members pay dues: The drugs are free.

Woodroof initially was told he could expect to live another 30 days. The movie suggests that abandoning AZT and switching to an entirely different drug regimen allowed Woodroof to live another seven years.

Not surprisingly, Woodroof's new business venture puts him in conflict with the DEA, FDA and other government agencies. It also allows him to find a measure of unexpected fulfillment as a drug entrepreneur.

McConaughey amply conveys Woodroof's delight in running a burgeoning business. He might be the only person in the world whose disease resulted in an ego boost.

Two major figures represent the medical community. Denis O'Hare plays a doctor in charge of AZT trials at a Texas hospital. Jennifer Garner portrays another doctor, a physician who begins to understand that rules promulgated by the medical establishment may actually be harming patients.

Dallas Buyers Club seems to want to give us insights about AIDS, about the perils of early treatments with AZT, about the blind recalcitrance of the FDA, about the bureaucratic foolishness of the DEA and about the ways in which helpful potentially alternative medicines have difficulty finding their way into the mainstream.

I don't know what director Jean-Marc Vallé intended, but his actors tend to overwhelm the medical issues at the movie's core. I have no problem with that: Some of those issues have been explored elsewhere. Besides, McConaughey and Leto have done what movies do best. They've given us a couple of unforgettable characters.

A game played mostly on the surface

In Ender's Game adult wisdom has become as rare as nuanced expression.

Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game has acquired a large and devoted following. I'm not an acolyte or even a reader of Card's popular books, so I approached the eagerly awaited movie version of the first novel in the series with an high hopes and open mind.

What I found in Ender's Game is a juvenile helping of sci-fi that wrestles with some big, topical issues, but would require ample applications of intellectual Clearasil® before it's ready to claim an unblemished place in the sci-fi big leagues.

Having said that, I certainly wouldn't dissuade fans of the books from seeing a movie that has been assembled by director Gavin Hood in ways that attempt to maximize action, much of it involving zero-gravity training exercises that pit teams of youthful combatants against one another.

If there's genius in the concept, it probably involves the way that the movie acknowledges that game-savvy youngsters are more easily adaptable to modern warfare than adults. In the future, killer instincts may not be applied at the end of a bayonet but at a digital console. Think drones on steroids.

Hood's kid-centered, tech-laden drama follows 10-year-old Ender Wiggen (Asa Butterfield) through various stages of training in facilities that orbit the Earth. Hood, who also wrote the screenplay, divides the movie roughly into thirds.

In the first (and skimpiest) section we meet Ender and his family, a sister (Abigail Breslin) and an older bother Peter (Jimmy 'Jax' Pinchak). The arrogant Peter quickly vanishes from the story, but Breslin's Valentine crops up intermittently, mostly to serve as Ender's emotional connection to a threatened world.

About that threat: It seems that at some prior time the Earth was attacked by insect-like creatures called Formics. Earth's warriors fought off the Formics, but the threat of another invasion remains.

Early on, Ender falls under the tutelage of Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford), a military commander who has been searching for a youthful warrior to lead the charge against the Formics.

A militarist to the bone, Graff believes that one big battle can eliminate the threat of future wars. For Graff, preemptive strikes are the quickest route to peace. If he weren't being played by Ford, perhaps Dick Cheney could have auditioned for the role.

Throughout Ender's training -- a combination of boot camp combined with a video-game competition -- Graff pushes Ender hard: He beleives he finally has discovered a kid with the requisite tactical instincts to take on the Formics once and for all.

Graff often is seen in the company of a psychological officer (Viola Davis). Davis's character advocates for Ender's mental well-being, something in which Graff has no interest.

Butterfield, who appeared in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, does an good job combing the geeky and violent impulses that define Ender. From time-to-time, Ender question's the idea that conflicts are best resolved with healthy applications of violence. Butterfield succeeds in making Ender's internal conflicts real.

As he advances through his training, Ender comes into conflict with another cadet (Moises Arias), a young man who seems to have a Napoleon complex. Petra, a cadet played by Hailee Steinfeld, helps Ender learn the ropes.

But the real star of this portion of the movie is a training facility where the cadets face off in a zero-gravity environment. Hood returns to this special-effects well a little too often. Repetition sets in.

The movie's third act offers some redemption. Ender moves into the final stage of his training, which involves preparing to lead the Earth's forces into a decisive battle with the Formics.

At this point, he meets Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), the warrior who lead Earth's forces to victory in the first encounter with the Formics.

Replete with a Maori-style facial tattoo that makes him look like a futuristic Queequeg, Kingsley apes the one-note severity of the other adults in the movie, but projects more depth than Ford, who makes a return to sci-fi. Think Han Solo without a personality.

Hood and his technical team save the best for last, using Ender's final training exercise as occasion to unfurl a series of dazzling special effects that add a level of sensory thrill that should please genre fans.

I won't spoil the ending, but those familiar with the story know that the story probably is intended as a cautionary tale. In truth, though, Ender's Game derives more energy from its staunch militarism than from any other source.

A summary: Ender's Game has been made with enough competence to please fans of the series and perhaps to expand that audience a bit. The entire enterprise has a juvenile flavor, interrupted by occasional bouts of brow furrowing as the story attempts to grapple with Big Questions. Unlike Ender, the movie doesn't emerge at the top of the sci-fi class, but it's nowhere near the bottom. And if sequels loom, there's plenty of room for improvement after what can be called a decent enough start.

The abject cruelty of U.S. slavery

12 Years a Slave is a powerful and necessary look at enslavement

When I was a kid, we learned that the Civil War was fought over slavery -- sort of. Though acknowledged as a cause of the war, the subject of slavery always seemed muted by more generalized issues: The industrial North vs. the agrarian South and states' rights vs. centralized federal concerns.

Fair to say that slavery didn't come alive as a shocking horror. We read little or nothing about the torments of the Middle Passage, about the cruelties of a system in which people were bought and sold without regard for family connections or about how much of the southern economy was built on the backs of people who were forced to endure humiliation and toil without either rest or recompense.

Movies haven't done much to clarify the picture. From Gone With the Wind to the recent Django Unchained, we've not had a story dedicated fully to describing what the world was like during the time of slavery -- and doing it from the point of view of someone who had been enslaved.

Now comes director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, written by John Ridley from a book by Solomon Northrup, a free black man who in 1841 was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. and sold into slavery.

Although McQueen has altered some of Northrup's narrative, Northrup's source material gives 12 Years a Slave an authenticity few other historical movies can claim.

This first-person account of America's "peculiar institution" maintains the formality of Northrup's language, but McQueen's images spring to life with troubling urgency.

Built around a solid and moving performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor (as Northrup), 12 Years a Slave hinges on a hideous deception. An accomplished fiddler, Northrup was tricked by a couple of charlatans into traveling with them as a violinist for a circus with which they supposedly were connected.

Once Northrup left his wife and children in Saratoga, N.Y., his fate was sealed. He was drugged and held in a "slave pen" in Washington a few blocks from the Capitol. In order to survive, Northrup gradually learned to hide his literacy (he was an educated man) and to answer to the name a slave trader arbitrarily gave him. He was called "Platt."

Obviously, we're a long way from the devoted slaves of southern fantasy. Mothers and children are viciously separated; brutal whippings are common, as is the sexual abuse of black women. At one point, Northrup is lynched.

His tormentors are driven off, but he's left to hang from a tree, his toes barely touching the ground, a man dancing over his own grave until his then owner (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives to end his ordeal.

Northrup's life was threatened when he found himself subjected to an overseer's wrath. The overseer (Paul Dano) couldn't abide Northrup's intelligence. Northrup had figured out a way to get his owner's lumber more easily to market. Dano's character -- a man called Tibeats -- deeply resented any initiative on the part of a black man.

After this horrific episode, financial difficulties forced Cumberbatch's character to sell Northrup to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a malicious slave owner who delights in abuse and who is involved in a sexual triangle with his wife (Sarah Paulson) and a slave (Lupita Nyong'o), who also happens to be the best cotton picker on the plantation.

For all of Epps' obvious evils, we probably learn more about southern society from the parts of the movie involving Cumberbatch's "kindly" Mr. Ford. Ford treats his slaves reasonably well, but he obviously accepts the institution of slavery and has profited from it. He's troubled by cruelty, but not enough to reject the system that allows it to flourish.

At times, McQueen presents us with tableaus that might have been inspired by old photographs, perhaps as a way of establishing tension between what we regard as "history" and the urgency of a drama that appears to be taking place before our eyes. A scene in which Northrup encounters a group of Indians might be the film's most mysterious, groups of outcasts who don't know quite what to make of each other.

In 1853, Northrup finally was rescued and restored to his former life. He was able to write a book about his experiences, and evidently helped slaves escape the South via the underground railroad.

As moving as Northrup's reunion with his family is, it can't (and shouldn't) entirely be enjoyed. The story of slavery isn't really about one man's journey back to his home and family; it's about all those who died as slaves, unconsoled by a loved one's touch, distant from the mothers who bore them and regarded as property in an economy built on acceptance of people as chattel.

McQueen, who previously directed Hunger and Shame, allows room for such thoughts. It's also telling (and more than a little sad) that 150 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a movie such as 12 Years a Slave still qualifies as a rarity.